When you hear the phrase "gaming notebook," what often comes to mind is some bulky monstrosity, a notebook in name only. Razer, however, has made some inroads by building gaming notebooks with style, even if they aren't the most powerful.

Today the company has announced two additions to the Blade family of gaming laptops. The first is a refresh of the existing 17.3-inch Blade laptop, now called the Razer Blade Pro, which retains the 1080p screen resolution of the previous model. Under the hood, however, Razer has added an unspecified Haswell-based Intel CPU and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. The notebook also includes a 128GB SSD with 256GB and 512GB upgrade options, 8GB of RAM, dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, and a user-configurable Switchblade trackpad and buttons. All of this is packed into a 0.88" thick chassis that weighs 6.58 pounds, which is pretty good given the screen size and specifications involved. The price starts at $2,299, a decent but not game-changing price drop from the Ivy Bridge model's $2,500.

Perhaps the newest member of the Blade family is more interesting—the new 14-inch Razer Blade. AnandTech reports that its internal specs are largely similar to its big brother's: a Haswell CPU, a GeForce GTX 765M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5, dual-band Wi-Fi, and 8GB of RAM. You do give up a few other features, however: the display is 1600×900 rather than 1080p, and the Switchblade trackpad is dropped in favor of a more conventional one from Synaptics. Still, you get a pretty impressive amount of computing power packed into a smaller (0.66" thick) and lighter (4.1 pounds) package, and the $1,799 starting price is more-or-less competitive with other high-end laptops like the MacBook Pro.

Both laptops will be shipping in Q2 after Intel's circa-Computex launch of its Haswell processors.

65 Reader Comments

But.... okay first of all a gaming laptop can't be upgraded in a way a home made gaming tower can. You can't just slap in a new video card or a new CPU. So you better right-size the thing from the start so it doesn't become obsolete in a year. That's a lot of money to waste, replacing the entire machine.

I have a gaming laptop. But mine is an Alienware with a 3.7 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, and a GTX 680 with 2 GB of video RAM. In other words, it is just as powerful as a big gaming tower and will be adequate for my needs for at least 3 years.

Anyway, my point. If you are getting a gaming laptop it better be fast... unless you play Mario type games in which case you don't even need a dedicated gaming laptop. Just get anything. If you want to play 3D games, the laptop better be fast. Midrange gaming laptop doesn't last as long as a midrange tower because NO UPGRADES.

way to generalize an entire market. Some people do value portability more. Its the same argument for gaming laptops in general, just a bit more portable.

From the youtube videos they're selling the laptops to designers and gamers, but mostly designers. I suspect that you can play a game for longer than 20 minutes without it becoming one big fireball from hell.

But.... okay first of all a gaming laptop can't be upgraded in a way a home made gaming tower can. You can't just slap in a new video card or a new CPU. So you better right-size the thing from the start so it doesn't become obsolete in a year. That's a lot of money to waste, replacing the entire machine.

I have a gaming laptop. But mine is an Alienware with a 3.7 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, and a GTX 680 with 2 GB of video RAM. In other words, it is just as powerful as a big gaming tower and will be adequate for my needs for at least 3 years.

Anyway, my point. If you are getting a gaming laptop it better be fast... unless you play Mario type games in which case you don't even need a dedicated gaming laptop. Just get anything. If you want to play 3D games, the laptop better be fast. Midrange gaming laptop doesn't last as long as a midrange tower because NO UPGRADES.

way to generalize an entire market. Some people do value portability more. Its the same argument for gaming laptops in general, just a bit more portable.

Of course they value portability more. Get a tablet. Or a cheap laptop or a notebook. I guess my point is being missed here. A gaming laptop is supposed to be a big monster because it needs big heatsinks and fans to cool down all that powerful hardware. If it doesn't have powerful hardware, then why pay the premium price? Just get anything portable. There are plenty of laptop systems on the market that have a dedicated GPU and aren't marketed toward gamers and thus do not command a premium price. Get that.

Perhaps there is a room for a spectrum of different gaming laptops. Processing power obviously isn't the only thing that matters to people who play games. Different people have different preferences. There's no need to create a false dichotomy between portability and power.

The 14" sounds promising. That's a fair amount of horsepower for a 1600x900 display.

It is in my opinion, however, I'm not sure about how it'll handle heat dissipation and then there is the price point which in my opinion is something that people expect in Apple territory, but not necessarily in Windows territory.

Slightly off topic, there are some laptops where you can upgrade the GPU, you need a laptop that makes use of the MXM standard and even then, not all GPUs may be compatible. It's also rather expensive and definitely not as straightforward as upgrading the video card in a desktop, may require some vbios modifications, but it's technically possible on some laptops like certain Clevos, MSIs, Alienwares (m17 and m18) and a few others. It's possible to put a HD7970m in a m17x R2 as an example.

EDIT: Something as thin as that razer is bound to have a soldered GPU though like most laptops available for that matter.

I...hate to agree. But I do. The argument against gaming laptops is slipping further and further away as more games get a chance to show their ability on Apple Macs. And their ability is pretty good on stock equipment for an apple.

Desktop gaming rigs are going to continue becoming a rare bird. Some people will buy a desktop. More people will buy a laptop.

A fearful ammount of people will just grab a tablet and play the tinker toy mario games like those found on Google play and Apple Store (which are becoming much less cornball and more impressive with every advance in SoC architecture).

The 14" sounds promising. That's a fair amount of horsepower for a 1600x900 display.

It is in my opinion, however, I'm not sure about how it'll handle heat dissipation and then there is the price point which in my opinion is something that people expect in Apple territory, but not necessarily in Windows territory.

Slightly off topic, there are some laptops where you can upgrade the GPU, you need a laptop that makes use of the MXM standard and even then, not all GPUs may be compatible. It's also rather expensive and definitely not as straightforward as upgrading the video card in a desktop, may require some vbios modifications, but it's technically possible on some laptops like certain Clevos, MSIs, Alienwares (m17 and m18) and a few others. It's possible to put a HD7970m in a m17x R2 as an example.

EDIT: Something as thin as that razer is bound to have a soldered GPU though like most laptops available for that matter.

MXM isn't really worth the extra cost though as probably by the time you upgrade the CPU socket will have changed. And a new MXM gfx card costs as much as a new laptop.

In any case I really love my Sager NP9150, it cost about $1800 with the Radeon 7970M and it's more powerful than either laptops in this article.

The 14" sounds promising. That's a fair amount of horsepower for a 1600x900 display.

It is in my opinion, however, I'm not sure about how it'll handle heat dissipation and then there is the price point which in my opinion is something that people expect in Apple territory, but not necessarily in Windows territory.

Slightly off topic, there are some laptops where you can upgrade the GPU, you need a laptop that makes use of the MXM standard and even then, not all GPUs may be compatible. It's also rather expensive and definitely not as straightforward as upgrading the video card in a desktop, may require some vbios modifications, but it's technically possible on some laptops like certain Clevos, MSIs, Alienwares (m17 and m18) and a few others. It's possible to put a HD7970m in a m17x R2 as an example.

EDIT: Something as thin as that razer is bound to have a soldered GPU though like most laptops available for that matter.

MXM isn't really worth the extra cost though as probably by the time you upgrade the CPU socket will have changed. And a new MXM gfx card costs as much as a new laptop.

In any case I really love my Sager NP9150, it cost about $1800 with the Radeon 7970M and it's more powerful than either laptops in this article.

Oh, I agree it's far from cost effective, just wanted to point out the technical feasibility of it

But.... okay first of all a gaming laptop can't be upgraded in a way a home made gaming tower can. You can't just slap in a new video card or a new CPU. So you better right-size the thing from the start so it doesn't become obsolete in a year. That's a lot of money to waste, replacing the entire machine.

I have a gaming laptop. But mine is an Alienware with a 3.7 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, and a GTX 680 with 2 GB of video RAM. In other words, it is just as powerful as a big gaming tower and will be adequate for my needs for at least 3 years.

Anyway, my point. If you are getting a gaming laptop it better be fast... unless you play Mario type games in which case you don't even need a dedicated gaming laptop. Just get anything. If you want to play 3D games, the laptop better be fast. Midrange gaming laptop doesn't last as long as a midrange tower because NO UPGRADES.

way to generalize an entire market. Some people do value portability more. Its the same argument for gaming laptops in general, just a bit more portable.

Of course they value portability more. Get a tablet. Or a cheap laptop or a notebook. I guess my point is being missed here. A gaming laptop is supposed to be a big monster because it needs big heatsinks and fans to cool down all that powerful hardware. If it doesn't have powerful hardware, then why pay the premium price? Just get anything portable. There are plenty of laptop systems on the market that have a dedicated GPU and aren't marketed toward gamers and thus do not command a premium price. Get that.

Perhaps there is a room for a spectrum of different gaming laptops. Processing power obviously isn't the only thing that matters to people who play games. Different people have different preferences. There's no need to create a false dichotomy between portability and power.

There may be differing tastes in gaming, but this laptop clearly only caters to the bleeding edge performance types. If your gaming preferences don't involve as much graphical sophistry, you don't need a "gaming" laptop. The only people that buy these things are those that have more money than they know what to do with and want a flashy, powerful, but impractical laptop. Professionals wouldn't need this either since a laptop with workstation graphics would suit their needs much better and would be much more efficient on heat and power.

The 14' really is quite a design. To give some perspective, the Vaio Z is of exactly the same thickness (0.66') and packs a similar underclocked quad-core processor. But it has a 15% smaller battery and no discreet graphics, while the 14' Blade manages to stuff a GTX card. Considering that the Z is still an industry benchmark in terms of powerful ultraportables, Razer has done a great job this time.

There may be differing tastes in gaming, but this laptop clearly only caters to the bleeding edge performance types. If your gaming preferences don't involve as much graphical sophistry, you don't need a "gaming" laptop. The only people that buy these things are those that have more money than they know what to do with and want a flashy, powerful, but impractical laptop. Professionals wouldn't need this either since a laptop with workstation graphics would suit their needs much better and would be much more efficient on heat and power.

I see things like these as portable graphics options on-the-go. I have a small tower in my dorm for video editing and running matlab, but I occasionally work on photos on a train or plane, and normal ultrabooks can't handle 30mb+ raw files well. Tablets would never work, they can't even be used to back files up properly. Plus, it's always nice to take a laptop over to a friend's place for gaming.

What I would really appreciate is Razer giving an option for K-series cards or at least AMD. The Blade is definitly not only for stupid rich people, though.

There may be differing tastes in gaming, but this laptop clearly only caters to the bleeding edge performance types. If your gaming preferences don't involve as much graphical sophistry, you don't need a "gaming" laptop. The only people that buy these things are those that have more money than they know what to do with and want a flashy, powerful, but impractical laptop. Professionals wouldn't need this either since a laptop with workstation graphics would suit their needs much better and would be much more efficient on heat and power.

I see things like these as portable graphics options on-the-go. I have a small tower in my dorm for video editing and running matlab, but I occasionally work on photos on a train or plane, and normal ultrabooks can't handle 30mb+ raw files well. Tablets would never work, they can't even be used to back files up properly. Plus, it's always nice to take a laptop over to a friend's place for gaming.

What I would really appreciate is Razer giving an option for K-series cards or at least AMD. The Blade is definitly not only for stupid rich people, though.

Ultrabooks don't have enough RAM and run on low power APU's. The Razer laptop is pure excess. If you want to do video and photos, get yourself a laptop with pro graphics. You can get a Dell precision that's better than this boondoggle of a laptop for a lot less money.

This 14" really appeals to me. I think the 1600x900 resolution is a brilliant decision to keep gaming performance optimal. Hell I'd consider selling my MBPr 15" and PC gaming rig combo if it can play games at native resolution without issue.

Never been a big fan of managing multiple computers. This is a great compromise for the semi-gamer that enjoys medium to high graphics in current gen games. I hope the reviews are positive.

I...hate to agree. But I do. The argument against gaming laptops is slipping further and further away as more games get a chance to show their ability on Apple Macs. And their ability is pretty good on stock equipment for an apple.

Desktop gaming rigs are going to continue becoming a rare bird. Some people will buy a desktop. More people will buy a laptop.

A fearful ammount of people will just grab a tablet and play the tinker toy mario games like those found on Google play and Apple Store (which are becoming much less cornball and more impressive with every advance in SoC architecture).

Hate to disagree with both of you, but I do.

Tablets are fine and dandy, but they're not quite where a solid laptop is. They do have their place, but for a person who really enjoys gaming...... and Angry Birds on the iPad does not "count"... a PC is still the way to go.

Will this change? Maybe. Touchscreen is good for some stuff. I could see it working well with a game like EVE Online, for example. There's other games where touchscreen will not cut it. MAYBE if you have a second touchscreen serving as a specialized UI. Tablets are slowly narrowing the gap on performance.

As for this Razer product?..... I think it's going to be a hard sell. This:

Quote:

The price starts at $2,299, a decent but not game-changing price drop from the Ivy Bridge model's $2,500.

You can get a solid laptop for quite a chunk less. Sure, it might not be tailored like the Razer product, but you'll get more bang for the buck. Specialized desktop gaming rigs, particularly COTS ones, are becoming more rare because the performance differences between the mainstream and those is becoming narrower.

As for Macs for gaming..... *rolls eyes*

As for Razer..... I'd love to see them IMPROVE their damn mice. I have had at least 3 or 4 that were complete and utter sh*t. Every single one starting doing weird stuff after 90 days.

Edit: Anyway..... how the hell did this become a discussion of Apple? Really?.....Oh wait....

I heard that the Haswells mainly focus on bringing down power usage. I think there is a marginal increase in performance, but if they actually managed to bring the wattage of the CPU's down, then these laptops could run quite a bit cooler. Im not sure about that GPU though.

Tablets are fine and dandy, but they're not quite where a solid laptop is. They do have their place, but for a person who really enjoys gaming...... and Angry Birds on the iPad does not "count"... a PC is still the way to go.

Will this change? Maybe. Touchscreen is good for some stuff. I could see it working well with a game like EVE Online, for example. There's other games where touchscreen will not cut it. MAYBE if you have a second touchscreen serving as a specialized UI. Tablets are slowly narrowing the gap on performance.

As for this Razer product?..... I think it's going to be a hard sell. This:

Quote:

The price starts at $2,299, a decent but not game-changing price drop from the Ivy Bridge model's $2,500.

You can get a solid laptop for quite a chunk less. Sure, it might not be tailored like the Razer product, but you'll get more bang for the buck. Specialized desktop gaming rigs, particularly COTS ones, are becoming more rare because the performance differences between the mainstream and those is becoming narrower.

As for Macs for gaming..... *rolls eyes*

As for Razer..... I'd love to see them IMPROVE their damn mice. I have had at least 3 or 4 that were complete and utter sh*t. Every single one starting doing weird stuff after 90 days.

Edit: Anyway..... how the hell did this become a discussion of Apple? Really?.....Oh wait....

All this shows is that you have a very narrow definition of games, which deliberately excludes games you don't enjoy.

Much has been made of the cost of an Apple device for an equivalent. Yet when manufacturers upgrade the requirements to fit the same form factor as Apple's while still trying to be powerful devices the products' prices have been equal to, and in most cases more than, the stated Apple device. The point is more that form factor counts, than 'Apple is teh Best!'. (At least, for tiggers; not so sure of Orangecream's intent, but that is only because I've never seen him criticize Apple. In fairness, most of his arguments have been sensible while arguing with either Linux or Microsoft fanbois. And we're a 'psychotically focused' bunch.)

I'm amazed to see the negativity towards gaming laptops. When it comes down to it, there is no suitable replacement for the value they provide. You can't lug a tower or console around with you, and I can't play Bioshock on an iPad. So the problem is that they are excessive? A $40,000 car is excessive. A $15,000 $15,000 range is damn excessive and yes, a $2,300 laptop is excessive (though my work purchased $2,900 laptops last year), but it is relative. I paid $950 with some coupons for an i7 equipped XPS which allowed me to opportunity lately to play Bioshock while I was waiting in the car in a parking lot. Sure as hell beats Angry Birds.

I heard that the Haswells mainly focus on bringing down power usage. I think there is a marginal increase in performance, but if they actually managed to bring the wattage of the CPU's down, then these laptops could run quite a bit cooler. Im not sure about that GPU though.

For now, it's not possible to fit a more powerful GPU à la GTX680m or GTX780m in something so thin since those usually have TDPs around 100W and that requires serious cooling in a laptop. For now, I don't see the Alienwares or Clevos going away anytime soon. They'll remain as much of a niche as they are for some time the way I see it.

Compenent manufacturers have been keeping TDP of higher performance laptop parts at the same level for some time now. The first Gen quad core i7s mobile had a TDP of 45W and it remained that way for sandy, ivy and now full voltage haswell mobile quads have a TDP of 47W if I'm not mistaken (how much of that is due to the improved IGP, I don't know though). There have also been some 35 W quad core with lower clock speeds too, but it's mostly 45W (and 55W for the extreme editions).

The TDP of the top tier GPUs has been in the 75-100 W range for quite some time too. Unless manufacturers start pushing lower TDP top end parts, or games suddenly get less demanding, I don't see big gaming laptops dying anytime soon.

Tablets are fine and dandy, but they're not quite where a solid laptop is. They do have their place, but for a person who really enjoys gaming...... and Angry Birds on the iPad does not "count"... a PC is still the way to go.

Will this change? Maybe. Touchscreen is good for some stuff. I could see it working well with a game like EVE Online, for example. There's other games where touchscreen will not cut it. MAYBE if you have a second touchscreen serving as a specialized UI. Tablets are slowly narrowing the gap on performance.

As for this Razer product?..... I think it's going to be a hard sell. This:

Quote:

The price starts at $2,299, a decent but not game-changing price drop from the Ivy Bridge model's $2,500.

You can get a solid laptop for quite a chunk less. Sure, it might not be tailored like the Razer product, but you'll get more bang for the buck. Specialized desktop gaming rigs, particularly COTS ones, are becoming more rare because the performance differences between the mainstream and those is becoming narrower.

As for Macs for gaming..... *rolls eyes*

As for Razer..... I'd love to see them IMPROVE their damn mice. I have had at least 3 or 4 that were complete and utter sh*t. Every single one starting doing weird stuff after 90 days.

Edit: Anyway..... how the hell did this become a discussion of Apple? Really?.....Oh wait....

All this shows is that you have a very narrow definition of games, which deliberately excludes games you don't enjoy.

Much has been made of the cost of an Apple device for an equivalent. Yet when manufacturers upgrade the requirements to fit the same form factor as Apple's while still trying to be powerful devices the products' prices have been equal to, and in most cases more than, the stated Apple device. The point is more that form factor counts, than 'Apple is teh Best!'. (At least, for tiggers; not so sure of Orangecream's intent, but that is only because I've never seen him criticize Apple. In fairness, most of his arguments have been sensible while arguing with either Linux or Microsoft fanbois. And we're a 'psychotically focused' bunch.)

It is called objectivity.

Hardly.

Razer knows damn well who their "target audience" is. This isn't "just me". What I think they're targeting with these products is the "ultralight" market (which I would say includes MacBook Air and its Window Ultrabook competitors). A large portion of the population wants lighter mobile equipment. Period.

I can see what Razer likely looked at. Hardcore gaming crowd (their usual customers) that likes those ultralights, but feels (perception mind you) that those are geared towards someone other than them.

And to be fair, I think the price point is "wishful thinking" from Razer. Kind of a "well Apple charges this much for their 'similar' product, why shouldn't we?" The main difference here?..... Apple has a boatload more experience of building a SYSTEM suitable for ultralight. They've geared much of their software to work with the stuff. They have spent YEARS hammering out specs and testing the compatibility. I'll be honest here, I have yet to see a MacBook Air that did not at least run smoothly. I will give Apple this... they did a good job in producing a qualitty ultralight. Are they "the best laptop"? There's a LOT of subjective things that can come into play with that. As with cars, more horsepower doesn't necessarily equate to being a better drive. The MacBook Air is the Mercedes McLaren of ultralights (which earned high praise as being a supercar that did not require significant experience to get a lot out of it). Sure, there's a "Ferrari" out there that may run better specs, and in the right hands can put the other to shame, but the "Apple product" is "more forgiving".

The idea that Razer thinks they can just jump into this?...... Really? Look at how Windows Ultrabooks struggled initially. They've improved significantly, but the total end experience for the average layman is not quite as refined as the competitor. Razer appears to have taken a "system" approach to this (similar to Apple) in that the final experience is the goal.

But...... Razer didn't develop these with the "casual gamer" in mind. Can we at least be honest about that? My biggest question with these, in the end, is this: Did Razer give this the TLC it is honestly going to need to go toe to toe with its competitors? If they built this with the same QA as some of their other products, I have a reeeeeeeeally bad feeling about it.

Do you see ANY of their products rated as "5 Eggs"? They are considered a premiere brand, but don't have any. Logitech has far more proportionally. That is NOT a good sign. They also not the only website with iffy reviews and ratings of their products.

Anyway, that's as close as I can probably come to an objective take on it. (And I'm kinda getting rambley since it's almost 1am).

The 14' really is quite a design. To give some perspective, the Vaio Z is of exactly the same thickness (0.66') and packs a similar underclocked quad-core processor. But it has a 15% smaller battery and no discreet graphics, while the 14' Blade manages to stuff a GTX card. Considering that the Z is still an industry benchmark in terms of powerful ultraportables, Razer has done a great job this time.

But I guess we'll have to wait for reviews...

I agree - I have a Z and the Blade does seem to trump it. The Z currently runs on Ivy Bridge, so I guess that Haswell improves the battery life of the Blade. The premium Z has a full HD screen which does look pretty, though at 14" screen size, and my eyesight getting worse, I think 1600 res is pretty good. The vaio does seem to huff and puff with non-gaming applications that I suspect are taxing the graphics card a bit (3ds Max etc) so I'm sure that the Blade's better graphics capabilities will benefit designers too.

Only 1080p? I wish they would take a leaf out of MBP Retina's (or Chromebook Pixel's) book and put a really good screen on it.

These laptops are supposed to be geared toward gaming and with that in mind, what’s the purpose a very high definition panel if you don’t have the GPU horsepower to run your games on it at the highest resolution?

I’m not in the market for a gaming laptop myself (I stay with my desktop ^ ^), but still, I was surprised by the amount of hate in the comments. While I understand this is not a product for everyone, I don’t get why so many people seem to consider their product like such an awful offer.

And on a sidenote, I have nothing against Apple, but if PC gaming is your primary concern; you just don’t buy a product running OSX.

Ultrabooks don't have enough RAM and run on low power APU's. The Razer laptop is pure excess. If you want to do video and photos, get yourself a laptop with pro graphics. You can get a Dell precision that's better than this boondoggle of a laptop for a lot less money.

Dell Precision m4700

Quadro GPU16GB RAMSSDi7 3470QM$2000

umm...did you notice the part about a mini tower? I have a 6760 card and a quad desktop i7 , along with 24G of ram and two small SSDs in RAID 0. Enough to run ~70% of the stuff I do, the rest is for proper computer/media labs. But it can't be while traveling, so can't that brick of a laptop.

Anyone who wants to buy something like that should think long and hard about desktop options, the Blade on the other hand is one of the few options that give at least some level of performance and battery life outside. The only thing I'd miss is an HDD for maximum backup ability, but I suppose an external one can't hurt.

I...hate to agree. But I do. The argument against gaming laptops is slipping further and further away as more games get a chance to show their ability on Apple Macs. And their ability is pretty good on stock equipment for an apple.

Desktop gaming rigs are going to continue becoming a rare bird. Some people will buy a desktop. More people will buy a laptop.

A fearful ammount of people will just grab a tablet and play the tinker toy mario games like those found on Google play and Apple Store (which are becoming much less cornball and more impressive with every advance in SoC architecture).

Hate to disagree with both of you, but I do.

Why do you disagree with me?

Quote:

As for this Razer product?..... I think it's going to be a hard sell. This:

Quote:

The price starts at $2,299, a decent but not game-changing price drop from the Ivy Bridge model's $2,500.

You can get a solid laptop for quite a chunk less. Sure, it might not be tailored like the Razer product, but you'll get more bang for the buck. Specialized desktop gaming rigs, particularly COTS ones, are becoming more rare because the performance differences between the mainstream and those is becoming narrower.

Sounds like you agree with me.

Quote:

As for Macs for gaming..... *rolls eyes*

As for Razer..... I'd love to see them IMPROVE their damn mice. I have had at least 3 or 4 that were complete and utter sh*t. Every single one starting doing weird stuff after 90 days.

Edit: Anyway..... how the hell did this become a discussion of Apple? Really?.....Oh wait....

Because you said what I implied, and the article specifically mentions how the, "$1,799 starting price is more-or-less competitive with other high-end laptops like the MacBook Pro."

I'm their target market. A 13" MBPr starts at $1,499 and I just bought a refurbished one for $1,329. The Razer Blade has a larger screen, thinner profile, lower resolution, faster GPU, heavier weight, and the same amount of storage. I was definitely interested in their Razer Blade Pro, except it was too big and heavy and expensive; the 14" is much closer (still a little too heavy and still too expensive), but if I needed the GPU I am definitely their target market.

I am sorry people if i am going to spend a minimum of $1,799 in a laptop, i rather buy a macbook pro than a Windows based laptop. For the simple reason that apart of the quality of machine you buy from Apple, Steam is now available for OS X and i have a bunch of games in Steam so gaming is pretty much covered.

Only 1080p? I wish they would take a leaf out of MBP Retina's (or Chromebook Pixel's) book and put a really good screen on it.

>1080p on a Windows laptop creates too many scaling issues currently. Plus remember this is primarily a gaming laptop, meaning you'd need more graphics power to drive native resolution gaming on one of these (more power, more heat, and this thing is probably a sandwich press already)

100 watts of components in something thinner than the butt of a Macbook Air, and 14" and pretty light...If it really pulls battery life (during causal use, of course) and cooling off well, it seems pretty appealing.

Plus, it makes me think the 13" rMBP could easily have a dGPU if they wanted.

I am sorry people if i am going to spend a minimum of $1,799 in a laptop, i rather buy a macbook pro than a Windows based laptop. For the simple reason that apart of the quality of machine you buy from Apple, Steam is now available for OS X and i have a bunch of games in Steam so gaming is pretty much covered.

But a fraction of those games are Mac compatible so far, right? I'm really asking, haven't checked. And has the performance delta been fixed? Previously equivalent chips performed like they were a generation older under OSX.

Besides, even the 15" rMBP only has a 650M, this has a 765 which is much better, it's like the old 670. The 13", which is closer to this in dimensions as well as price, only has Intel integrated.

I am sorry people if i am going to spend a minimum of $1,799 in a laptop, i rather buy a macbook pro than a Windows based laptop. For the simple reason that apart of the quality of machine you buy from Apple, Steam is now available for OS X and i have a bunch of games in Steam so gaming is pretty much covered.

Guess i am the exact opposite of opinion here, if i was going to spend that much cash on a performance laptop why would i buy one that has a fraction of the software available for it? Sorry, there is way more windows software i would want to run on this thing than apple software...... not even talking about games, which is a no brainer here.

Ultrabooks don't have enough RAM and run on low power APU's. The Razer laptop is pure excess. If you want to do video and photos, get yourself a laptop with pro graphics. You can get a Dell precision that's better than this boondoggle of a laptop for a lot less money.

Dell Precision m4700

Quadro GPU16GB RAMSSDi7 3470QM$2000

umm...did you notice the part about a mini tower? I have a 6760 card and a quad desktop i7 , along with 24G of ram and two small SSDs in RAID 0. Enough to run ~70% of the stuff I do, the rest is for proper computer/media labs. But it can't be while traveling, so can't that brick of a laptop.

Anyone who wants to buy something like that should think long and hard about desktop options, the Blade on the other hand is one of the few options that give at least some level of performance and battery life outside. The only thing I'd miss is an HDD for maximum backup ability, but I suppose an external one can't hurt.

Anybody that wants portable graphics is going to want to consider that. So you have a tower, so what? We're talking about a graphics laptop, not a tower. You made it clear that you want to do on your laptop what you do on your tower: graphics. A workstation laptop is exactly the hardware for that task and you can do it cheaper than a Razer boondoggle.